In the long run, it has been a long run

Published: Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, February 22, 2013 at 8:46 a.m.

Old joke: Definition of mixed emotions — watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new car!

Mixed emotions are what I have right now as I write this. Dearly beloved, with this column, I will be leaving the Times-News. It is difficult to say goodbye.

For nearly a quarter of a century, I sat down with my readers on Saturday mornings and shot the breeze. Warnings. Jokes. Blessings. Good news and bad. I never once felt as if I were talking with strangers.

I will truly miss all of my readers, even the belly-achers, for we have grown older together.

I have always been guided by a framed quote on my desk. Capt. Dick Winter of Easy Company fame ("Band of Brothers") believed in this:

"If you can," he said, "find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what when the chips are down."

I hope that will be my legacy as well.

I am often asked of which column am I most proud. That is easy. In 1991, I wrote about a sweet, precious dog that needed saving. Her name was Sarah. She was in lockup. Her crime? She was an unwanted stray surrounded by dozens of other mutts. They were all barking and jumping on me. Over in the corner, however, stood Sarah. Her silence and loneliness spoke to me like thunder. I knew this was the dog I came to write about. She put her head tenderly into my hands. I promised her I would do my best to find her a place of her own. I wrote that column with prayer and more prayers.

Two hours after that column appeared, the call I was so desperately waiting on came in. Sarah had been adopted into a wonderful caring family! She was finally loved. I checked on her a year later. She was queen of the house with her "own pillow." She had found what all living things want and need. A place to belong. A home. If I never do another worthy thing in my life, I have that under my belt, thanks to God Almighty.

Though it was a long time ago, all it takes is a quick remembrance of that pup and it gets me through the dark times.

It is time to go, and I want to explain why. Something our American philosopher H.D. Thoreau said will illustrate. We all know Thoreau built himself a cabin in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. He went there for one reason only. He wanted to strip away all the fluff and nonsense of America's worship of materialism. He wanted to boil life down to the core of what man really needs and is necessary.

He did that and wrote about it. He has been both admired and ridiculed. After his experiment in the cabin, he came back to live in town. Many asked him why he returned. He replied, "I went into the woods because it was time. I came back for the same reason."

I began writing for The Times-News because it was time. I looked around me and saw corruption, cronyism, bullying and incompetence.

I saw animals being abused and murdered. I saw our city trees destroyed. I saw blatant racism. And hardly a word was said against any of it by anyone. It was time to put up or shut up. I stepped into the ring. I was scared, but with God's help, I fought against local evil with everything I could muster.

I still witness all the aforementioned. Have I lost heart? No, because I answered the call and fought local sin and wrongdoing. It is only the cowards who remain silent who need be ashamed.

I am proud to have been a part of The Times-News.

I say all this not to boast but to issue a challenge for someone else to step in the ring in my place and fight for what is right. Someone younger and in better health.

And speaking of challenges, I take this opportunity to challenge all the local Times-News columnists to start fighting locally. All you are doing now is mere intellectualizing, and the result is meaningless hash and rehash of the nationally syndicated columnists. Your columns are without passion or dignity.

For heaven's sake, write from your guts. Get mad! Get angry and focus on dear old Hooterville. Our blessed town needs help. The devil knows there are enough bad guys, greed and mismanagement going on right here at home. It is your duty to wake up local readers. Shake 'em up to what is going on. If our local columnists won't step up to fight locally, then the bad guys are going to win. If you are a columnist or a letter to the editor writer, keep hammering the bad guys. Keep hammering, Marine Corps style.

Every good fighter knows when to step out of the ring, hang up his gloves and go home. I need to spend more time with the animals and birds, God's special gifts to the Earth. Unlike mankind, these blessed creatures are God's best gambles. They even speak with the tongues of angels if we have the ears to hear.

Enough. I want to leave you with a passage from one of my favorite books, "Pilgrims at Tinker Creek" by Anne Dillard. The book won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. It is a must-read for any true reader. Shop locally and buy a copy from my favorite bookstore, Fountainhead Books on Main Street, Hendersonville.

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down."

I want to wish every one of my readers all the best. God bless you and goodbye.